I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.

Though the blame cannot be placed entirely on publishers, I do think a more diverse pool of editors would go a long way toward broadening the perspective. Our role is to work together to create books that act as wide-open doors - books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.

There's probably more of a struggle to get material and narratives published that really speak to black culture. And that has a lot to do with the mergers and buyouts and the corporations being more in control of the purse strings. We find that the projects have to come with higher expectations rather than books that just should be published. That's disturbing because we might find fewer and fewer children's books by African Americans or with black cultural themes.

Part of what I'm doing with generations is that I try to express in my work pieces of my growing up years that I can look back on with great fondness - specifically, a sense of family.

If I were to give myself a pat on the back, it would be for sticking with bookmaking as my primary way of expressing myself over the span of fifty years.

I'm often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don't ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that's all.

All of us have places that we can go where we feel most complete.